I'm quiet the science guy to my training. I love numbers and I love seeing them in front on me. I work well have a plan and I work even better seeing the what lies on the horizon. I aspire to become a great athlete in my AG of 45-49 where I can qualify to enter the Hawaiian Ironman some day. As we all know there are many days clouded, setbacks and the long road to improving oneself is also process unto itself. One I hope we can all get to our goals.

Well before I go on for the reason to post. One is a race report from last weekend for a national duathlon title series I'm doing with Tinman's (TM) advice helped a great deal. I kept to the plan for the run1, the bike and run 2. I only let my self down by not running 4 loops on the run1. I was so focused on keeping in check my pace. My run2 off the bike was the only 20secs slower than 1st place. And he was 4yrs younger than I, and I'm sure he hadn't had knee surgery in the last 8mths. In fact both 1st and 2nd were up from 40-44AG and so no doubt age was on their side. As it was I could've had 3rd by several minutes over last years winner. So very pleased with the running10k and 5k splits despite the 2000mile journey only to find when I get home the 29mins 10k run was short by 2.5k. I ran 3 loops not 4!! I know what to look for next time and I hope it is not the failure to clinch the national AG duathlon title here.

Nevertheless onto the next race in two weeks and Tinman (TM) has my workouts for me. Despite having the 2nd fastest bike split, and my q's to Tinman, he had already built in workouts to up my bike FTP. I didn't realise it till later....2hrs later mullying over the details and looking to find places to squeeze in more quality workouts over the next 12 days. Gentleman, more reason why this guy TM is awesome as we know the running workouts we get, but here is the kicker. I have been using another system from Training Peaks and from my reading on peaking, resting before the A race, getting the appropriate about of training in for my 2weeks. Well I had read from Joe Friel's blog the need for rest before racing and how one eases off the training volume, increasing the intensity and making sure there are adequate rests in these weeks. Well Mr JF gives a number, called TSB...it's a measure of training, intensity and resting etc and the secret Mr JF had found was around +20 points for TSB for ideal peaking where your form, fatigue and fitness all come togther. I still use the training peaks to measure and record my workouts and with the workouts from TM I had graded projected workouts with the appropriate score also. And lo behold what was I going to see at the end of the last two days.......yep a score of +20 points too.

Here is the graph..

race day is 8/25; see how this week 'Form' falls because of the extra workload for this week but then next week from Sunday 8/19 the black line 'Form" rises and the red 'fatigue' line eases by about 10-15%, meaning TM has already anticipated that the week leading up to the race backing off and letting the body recover in prep for race day.

So fellow readers MR TM I'm sure secretly knew this and just doesn't say it aloud to some follows. But without doubt he must have known this from his experience. Without him knowing about this post I share with you a little reason if you were unsure about the methods used. Here is another feather in Mr TM cap. Well done. I too am amazed at his forcasting of training just for two weeks. Welll I have another 3 more races to follow the plan and will report later. For now I'm all smiles and despite this weeks heavy workouts I know next week is easier and my form will improve, my fitness will remain stable and the fatigue will fall. All in race restedness.

Just thought I would share my excitement, even if the words don't come across that way.

I used to be a precision oriented running geek. Thankfully Tinman has driven some common sense into my quantoid brain. Some days now I even run a measured 10km course without a watch. Well, it's actually a 2km loop around a lake and without a watch I forget how many loops I have run. Could be 10km or could be 14km on an easy day. Doesn't really matter anymore, I go home when I've had enough. Scary.